The Rise of the Third Reich

"Your Excellency, Imperial Marshal, I am Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko, sniper company of the 14th SS 'Ukrainian' Panzergrenadier Division sniper company."

A very sweet-looking female SS soldier in her twenties with almost perfect posture and military appearance strode up to Hessmann, stood upright, gave him a German salute, and returned the favor. Introduce yourself in fluent German.

"What? What?" Hessmann's eyes, which were already widened, almost fell out.

A female SS combat soldier, this was enough to surprise Hessman. Now he was shocked to hear that this Ukrainian female soldier was actually named Lyudmila Pavlichenko.

Is this really the location of the 14th SS "Ukrainian" Panzergrenadier Division? Why is there a Soviet heroine here?

"Reich Marshal, Private Pavlichenko performed outstandingly in the Battle of Lviv. He fought on the line of fire for 46 days and was confirmed to have killed 39 Soviet soldiers. He has been awarded an Iron Cross First Class."

Reinhard Heydrich, the Chief Minister of Western Ukraine and Vice Chairman of the Defense Council of Western Ukraine, accompanied Hersmann. It was he who arranged for the Reich Marshal to come today to award the combat heroes of the 14th SS Ukrainian Division. The heroine Pavlichenko is a typical example that Heydrich held in one hand.

The performance of Pavlichenko's 14th SS "Ukrainian" Division in the Battle of Lviv was as good as the 5th SS "Wiking" Division in the Battle of Warsaw, so it was upgraded from an infantry division. For the Panzergrenadier Division.

During the Battle of Lviv, a number of combat heroes emerged from the 14th SS Division. Pavlichenko, who was "specially approved" by Heydrich to enlist in the army, was one of them.

This woman actually killed 39 people... It's enough to get the Iron Cross First Class, but the Knight's Iron Cross is not enough, but in order to set an example, you have to give it a discount. Hessman looked at Pavlichenko again and found that the other party was looking at him with admiration and a little uneasiness in his eyes. So he smiled and said: "Private, are you a member of the National Socialist Workers' Party?"

"Yes, I am a member of the National Socialist Workers' Party and I joined the party organization at Kyiv State University."

Pavlichenko actually became a Nazi... He really ruined the world for himself. Hersmann nodded, took a Knight's Cross of Iron Cross from Adjutant Stauffenberg, and hung it on the collar of the heroine Pavlichenko.

…

“What about the Ukrainians?”

On the way back to the city of Lviv from the station of the 14th SS "Ukrainian" Panzergrenadier Division, Hersmann asked Heydrich.

"They are all good soldiers, loyal and trustworthy." Heydrich said with a smile. "Although they are not as good as the Germans, and perhaps not as good as the volunteers in Western and Northern Europe, they are much better than the Poles. Marshal of the Empire , I think we should no longer regard the Ukrainian soldiers who participated in the Lviv battle as a defense force, but as a defense force.”

"Wehrmacht?" Hersman seemed to be interested. "Can they fight like the Wehrmacht?"

In today's military sector of the German Empire, the Defense Force is equivalent to the militia, and its weaponry, equipment and training requirements are much worse than those of the Wehrmacht. In addition, the mission of the National Defense Force is to defend the homeland and in principle will not go abroad to fight.

"Maybe it's still a little short of that," Heydrich smiled, "but the Ukrainians are very enthusiastic. They all want to regain their lost territory and are willing to fight for us. The most important thing is that they have mobilized an army of 600,000 people! And! Most of them belong to the front-line combat troops, and many of them have experienced the bloody battle of Lviv.”

Although the bloody battle in Lviv was not as intense as the Battle of Warsaw, it was still a large battle involving more than one million people, which could indeed train new recruits.

"What do Admiral Busch and Admiral Hausser think?" Hessman then asked.

General Ernst Busch is now the commander of the 4th Army of the German Wehrmacht (not the 4th Armored Army), and General Paul Hausser is the commander-in-chief of the Western Ukraine Defense Forces. The Battle of Lviv was fought under the cooperative command of the two of them.

“They had the same view,” Heydrich told Herschmann. “They thought that if we could attach some French artillery, assault gun units, and trucks to the Wehrmacht, we could transform them into the Wehrmacht and let them become the Wehrmacht. After the decisive battle on the Belarusian side, they launched the right-bank Ukrainian operation.”

"Operation Right Bank Ukraine during mud season and winter?" Hersman raised an eyebrow.

There is a plan to use Ukrainians to liberate right-bank Ukraine, but in that plan the Ukrainians are not the main force, but the subordinates. Now Busch and Hausser may have recognized the fighting prowess of the Ukrainians at the Battle of Lvov and therefore wanted them to be the main force, and also wanted to advance during the mud season and winter.

"The winter and mud in Ukraine cannot stop the Ukrainians themselves, because they belong to this land, and everyone on this land will give everything they have to support their own soldiers."

Of course, the Ukrainian winter will not freeze Ukrainians to death. The real threat of mud and cold winter is the difficulty of logistical transportation. But as long as the Ukrainian people on the right bank are willing to support the German Wehrmacht formed by Ukrainians, the difficulties in logistical supply will be greatly alleviated.

Heydrich finally said with confidence: "As long as we can win in Belarus and make a gesture of attacking Moscow, we can mobilize the enemies of Ukraine to go north, and then dispatch the defense forces composed of Ukrainians, we will definitely win in Ukraine on the right bank. "

If Marshal Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko, the commander of the Southwest Front of the Soviet Red Army, heard what Heydrich said, he would definitely sneer at it. Because he is a right-bank Ukrainian, he was born in Odessa, close to Romania, but he supports the Soviet Union and the Bolshevik Party 10,000%.

He felt very sad about the desperate resistance of his unscrupulous compatriots in Lviv, and he was fully aware that there were still many reactionary elements among the Ukrainians on the right bank.

"Comrade Secretary, it is very likely that the enemy will invade Right Bank Ukraine soon. We must be prepared. The situation in Right Bank Ukraine is likely to change."

When Timoshenko, who returned to Kiev in despair, spoke to Mikhail Alexeevich Burmishtenko, the new political commissar of the Southwest Front and the second secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Party, his voice Husky and low.

"It can't be changed! Right-bank Ukraine will always belong to the Soviet power." Burmishtenko seemed very confident. The struggle to defend Right Bank Ukraine is also of great significance to him, because he is a very young senior cadre, only 40 years old this year, as young as Belarus's first S secretary Ponomarenko. Being the number two man in Ukraine at such an age, his future is naturally limitless. And he is now lucky enough to have replaced Ukraine's First Secretary Khrushchev as the military commissar of the Southwest Front.

Khrushchev seemed to be very unlucky. Originally, after the Battle of Lviv, the Military Commissar of the Western Front was replaced, and it was Khrushchev's turn. But Stalin happened to think of setting up a general headquarters at this time. Marshal Voroshilov became the commander-in-chief of the northwest direction, and his partner was Political Bureau member Zhdanov. As Marshal Budyonny became the commander-in-chief of the southwest, he naturally needed a qualified military commissar, so Khrushchev was transferred from Kiev to partner with Budyonny. So the Military Commissar of the South-Western Front "luckily" fell on the young Burmishtenko.

"By the way, the Western Army and the Belarusian Front are now preparing to defend Warsaw, Brest, Minsk and Smolensk. Are our Southwest Front preparing to defend Kiev?"

Timoshenko and Burmishtenko chatted for a while, but suddenly the conversation changed and they raised the issue of preparing for the defense of Kiev.

"Defend Kiev?" Burmishtenko was stunned. "Comrade Commander, what are you talking about? Kiev is 500 kilometers away from Lviv. How can the enemy reach Kiev? And it is already late August. "October is the mud season and winter will begin in November. How can Kiev be in danger?"

What Burmishtenko said made sense, but Timoshenko was always a little uneasy. His Southwestern Front was in bad shape and had been demoralized after withdrawing from Lviv. Three more elite group armies with large numbers of mechanized troops were transferred away, and their strength also appeared weak.

Moreover, according to the orders of the Supreme Command, the main task of the Southwest Front is to monitor the enemies of Lviv, while covering the direction of Belarus, and to defend the border with Romania to prevent the enemy from invading Ukraine from Romania.

In other words, the Southwest Front Army must use less than 900,000 troops to complete three very difficult tasks at the same time.

At the same time, there are still huge hidden dangers behind them - right-bank Ukraine is now full of lurking anti-G-revolution elements, who are ready to move and prepare to cooperate when the German army invades. These Ukrainian anti-revolutionary elements are also the reason why Burmishtenko is unwilling to prepare for war in Kiev with great fanfare.

Because preparing for war in Kiev is tantamount to admitting that the Red Army is facing defeat, which will greatly encourage the anti-G revolution elements in Ukraine (actually the people on the right bank of Ukraine who do not know the truth), and maybe there will be some uprisings or something. If things get serious, he, the second secretary of Ukraine, will move as soon as he wants. In fact, the reason why he became the second secretary of Ukraine at such a young age was not because he was particularly loved by Stalin, but because Ukraine (referring to left-bank Ukraine) was the hardest hit area by the Great Purge. There are no senior cadres in the country, and in order to maintain national autonomy, it is the turn of young cadres like Burmishtenko to flourish...